Strawberries & Cream Cupcakes

If you’re like me, visiting the produce section of the grocery store in the middle of winter is a huge let-down. While I do love the changing of the seasons, living in the middle of the country really limits what we can easily purchase when it comes to fruits and vegetables- yes, you can buy strawberries in January, but they are usually smaller, less flavorful and always on the verge of spoiling by the time you get them home.

Because we are always left scurrying to finish fruit before it goes bad, I find myself doing a lot of baking with fruit in the winter time – banana breads, blueberry muffins, and of course these strawberry cupcakes. Using fresh strawberries in cake really improves the flavor – in this case, there is just no comparison to the boxed cake mix.

I’ve made this cupcake a couple of times before but it’s one of those elusive recipes that I always forget to take pictures of – so this time I made sure I snapped a couple of quick ones before I delivered them. To me, these cupcakes taste a lot like good strawberry ice cream. The cake uses real strawberry puree in the batter, which not only gives them a great pink color, but it also makes them taste amazing. The swiss meringue buttercream is creamy and perfectly compliments the sweet strawberry flavor.

There are a lot of strawberry cake recipes out there that use red food coloring to make the color more what you’d expect, but I think the strawberry puree gives these a nice pink color so I didn’t touch them. I’m not sure that a bright pink cupcake really appeals to my senses, anyway…I did dust these with a pink sugar and some white pearls, but only because they were for a baby shower.

Hope you enjoy these!

Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes

Yield: 1 dozen jumbo cupcakes or 24 standard cupcakes

Cake Ingredients:

1 and 1/3 cup whole fresh or frozen strawberries, thawed

3 cups all-purpose flour, sifted

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

1/2 cup whole milk, room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 cups sugar

2 large eggs, room temperature

4 large egg whites, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cup jumbo muffin tin with cupcake liners; set aside.

Place strawberries in a small food processor; process until pureed. You should have about 1/3 cup of puree, add a few more strawberries if necessary or save any extra puree for frosting; set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a small bowl, mix together milk, vanilla, and strawberry puree; set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter on medium-high speed, until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar and continue to beat until well combined and fluffy. Reduce the mixer speed to medium and slowly add egg and egg whites until just blended.

With the mixer on low, slowly add half the flour mixture; mix until just blended. Add the milk mixture; mix until just blended. Slowly add remaining flour mixture, scraping down sides of the bowl
with a spatula, as necessary, until just blended.

Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups. Transfer muffin tin to oven and bake until tops are just dry to the touch, 22 to 25 minutes. Transfer muffin tin to a wire rack and let cupcakes cool completely in tin before frosting.

Hi! I’m not sure, some cupcakes bake with domed tops and some just bake with flat tops – I did use a jumbo cupcake pan for these and didn’t fill them all the way (only about 2/3 full) so now that I think about it, that probably contributed to the “flatness” of the top. Hope this helps!

Megan

These look awesome, and I’m going to try these this week! I was wondering do you have a strawberry buttercream frosting? Not the meringue one